Why marketers are wasting their media budgets - Evan Shapiro

23:40Evan Shapiro:They're bigger than all of NBC Universal, which is NBC and Peacock and the rest. So they're massive on television, but they're not bought like television. Why? And there's this misperception and bias of the traditional television folk that it's not really TV because they're watching whatever, which is antiquated thinking. Most people are spending most of their time on YouTube, especially when it's on television, watching proper television. 45 minutes, videos that are 45. I did a study with Little Dot Studios about where the most of the watch time was. most of the watch time is on content 30 minutes or longer, not under 30 minutes.

24:24Evan Shapiro:And the most watched length of video on YouTube is the TV hour, 45 minutes. So I don't understand why it's not priced the same way you would price NBC. And that is a bias that the industry has. Now, part of that is the traditional television people have to understand how to use YouTube properly. If If Paramount and BBC and NBC and ZDF all really taught themselves how to use YouTube correctly, they could use it as another distribution platform equal to Sky or Orange or any of these other platforms that they also have revenue splits and deals with. So I do think it's greatly undervalued, especially on TV.

25:10Well, back to our friends at Little Dot Studios. We did an event together called The Calling. They did a survey of everyone who came, maybe 380 people. and they asked how important is YouTube to your media strategy? 82 % said very important. And next question was how confident are you in your strategy? And only 4 % said very confident. So this is massive. In fact, the report was called the confidence gap at the end of it, because there's a big gap between the priority people are giving it and the ability to.

25:37Evan Shapiro:But then think about when times when you're not confident, when are you the least confident? It's when you don't know the answer, right? So when you don't know the answer, you get anxious and you fear that you're doing the wrong thing. It is an education process and there's two factors to that. One, they feared it for so long as an enemy instead of a partner that they've refused to teach themselves how to use it. Two, the industry is controlled by old people who don't take the time to understand these new platforms. Bring people in who weren't born in 1999 or earlier and they will help you learn these new platforms and how to use them correctly.

26:20Evan Shapiro:I think one of the biggest movements in the creator economy and in media over the next five years is going to be employee-generated content, EGC. And I talked with a great creator at CanLion about this, Joel Marlon Arlinson, and we both came at this simultaneously. He's been talking about it on TikTok and Instagram for some time. I am focused on this great creator named the Staples Baddy here. Hire creators as employees, not as contractors, as employees. Let them help you run your media and your programming and your distribution strategy. And your programming and your distribution strategy will improve.

27:01I love that. That's amazing advice. And I also think it applies in B2B as well. Absolutely. That's what I've learned in the last seven years is, you know, creating stuff myself. Well, look at our careers, right?

27:15Evan Shapiro:We're both failed executives, right? We are, yeah. And now we're both creators. And now people from the companies who wouldn't hire us are now paying us pretty outrageous sums to do shit for them because we're creators. And we're both old as fuck, right? And yet we learned it. And so I think that's a case study in best practices for the people who watch this podcast. And your employees are your best advocates as well. Yes. They will help you recruit. They'll present the company in a great light. They'll reach audiences that your corporate account could never reach. And every one of my employees is under 30, every single one of them.

27:52Evan Shapiro:And it started out where I was teaching them, but now it's reverse trended. And now they're teaching me. And it's a really great virtuous circle. And that, to me, is what every corporation should be doing. They refuse to include people in their offices and in the rooms where things happen that are younger than 30. and grew up too poor to afford Netflix. Stop doing that. If the only thing you did was include people younger than 30 and people who grew up and didn't go to Oxbridge or Ivy League, if that's the only change you made at your corporation, your corporation would improve its performance within 90 days.

28:33Love that. So we're going to put creators in the undervalued sector, I reckon, on a basis.

28:39Evan Shapiro:I do. I do think that, again, it's an education process. I don't think that they're really being used properly. I'm sure you've had this happen, which is why does it cost so much? It's just you. Well, but that doesn't mean there's less work involved, you asshole. I work really hard on, you work really hard on this, right? And so, and my audience and my relationship with my audience is valuable to you or we wouldn't be having a conversation. So yes, there's a premium that you have to have. Well, in a way, I think there's more work because I think the old model is I'm going to pay this outlet to say my message or deliver my message for me.

29:15I'll decide what the message is. It gets played out on the media. With creators, you're co-collaborating. You're inventing something unique, bespoke, that's tailor-made to the audience that they will want to consume. And a byproduct of that will be, you know, your brand gets more well-known.

29:30Evan Shapiro:And think about it this way. You know, the most expensive ads in the world are inside the Super Bowl here in the United States, right? $4 million a spot. And then the cost to make it on top of that. Why? It's because the audience is there. They're there live and they're wrapped. I'm not saying you should pay a creator as much as you pay for a spot in the Super Bowl, but their clout that you're stealing is more valuable than the time you're going to buy inside a television show on TV. I'm sorry that that's the case. I hope this doesn't hurt people's feels, but this is the truth. both. And the thing I think people don't always understand is that the audience are buying into the creator and that's what they're consuming.

30:14And therefore, if you're a brand, you can't just go and plaster an advert all over it.

30:18Evan Shapiro:No, these are mini cults, right? That's what the community of a creator is. And by the way, the smaller the community, probably the higher the devotion, right? My reach is not that great, but everybody who listens to me loves the stuff that we put out, So the attention is higher. The engagement is higher. The belief in what I'm saying is higher than just plopping a 30-second spot inside Abbott Elementary. Well, we'll get this one out of the way then because I had podcasts on the list. So we're very biased here. Yeah, but you have the Thinkbox data. All data demonstrates that the podcast is actually the most effective form of advertising.

31:03Evan Shapiro:it's because of everything I just said, which is, and the intimacy between the podcaster and the audience is even greater because they're in your ear. Exactly. Right? It's ASMR. Well, bring some data on that one. If I compare, so you take YouTube, typically of a 45 minute episode, probably 12 minutes will be the average listen time. Whereas we more like 40 minutes on audio because you can do other things, can't you? You don't have to watch. You can listen while you're out for a run. You can on the treadmill, walking your dog. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think that's a that's a really crucial element of the kind of attention economy is it's a part of my daily routine.

31:45Yeah.

31:45Evan Shapiro:Right. I'm all every week I listen to the CMO podcast on my ride on whatever day you come out. And then the next day is this podcast and the next day is this podcast. That's the appointment viewing that people were listening to. But the intimacy and the relationship, it's like a friend telling you something. And we all know word of mouth is the number one way that people conflate the way that they make purchasing decisions. Exactly right. I talk with marketers all day. Many of them say the same thing. Traffic is down, leads are down, and they're not sure why until they realize what has changed.

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33:04Next one, TikTok.

33:05Evan Shapiro:I think it's undervalued. I think it's the greatest video relationship on phones. And I think the phones are the center of the universe. Now, I have problems with the way that company is run. But it's my constant companion at this point, and I'm old. So now think about the Gen Zers who it's truly the case. Instagram? Overvalued. Instagram is kind of the also ran to TikTok, and I don't think the level of attention is as great on Instagram. Now, I think it's getting better over time with Reels, but there's a real backlash against that company that there's a reckoning that Meta is going to face at about this point next year.

33:55Evan Shapiro:And internally, they're in a kind of panic about stuff. So I do think, I think it's actually, you know what? I think it's appropriately valued. I think whatever you're paying for it, don't pay more and consider paying less because you have an alternative. And sticking with meta, where do you put Facebook? I mean, if you're after your mom and your grandparents, it's a great platform. Isn't that wild? Yeah. Because when we were younger, that was like the kids' one. But that's kind of like saying TV was the dominant thing when we were kids. Yeah, you're absolutely right. But Facebook had no competition, right?

34:31Evan Shapiro:And so that initial user base, the early adapters of Facebook have aged with Facebook. So now more than half of their audience is over 55. So more than half of Facebook's audience comes from the 20 % of the population that is going to be dead soon. And, you know, and they, by the way, they are harder to convince to switch brands. So it's much more difficult. Like I'm never going to not buy a Volvo as my next car. That is my car. I'm never going to not buy Colgate as my toothpaste. I'm stuck there. But younger consumers can be convinced to switch brands and switch loyalties. So I think for political advertising, Facebook's a great spend.

35:10Evan Shapiro:I think for everything else, you know, adult diapers, I guess, and hair coloring and, you know, erection dysfunction pills. Like, great place. Yeah, yeah. Love it. All right. What about LinkedIn? What's your point? I think it's off the radar. I think that not only is it undervalued, I think it's really, it's not on most buyers' radar right now. It is a very powerful marketing tool, especially for B2B. Oh, totally. So if you're selling software, you're selling, I had a conversation with somebody who's starting a new initiative around tech. And they talked about TikTok and they talked about YouTube and they talked about Instagram.

35:53Evan Shapiro:I'm like, where's LinkedIn? You want to know where all the tech buyers are? They're on LinkedIn. You know, you want to know where all the buyers of The Economist and all these other outlets? That's where it is. So, yeah, there's a very vibrant, my whole career is based on LinkedIn. I'm one of the original LinkedIn influencers. And it's been a very powerful market for me. And now people pay me pretty nicely to reach my audience on LinkedIn. We did a LinkedIn Live earlier today. It was a real, you know, it was a buzzy kind of thing. So, yeah, I think it's not only undervalued. If you're not thinking about your LinkedIn strategy now, especially if you have a high-end product or you're in the B2B market, you're being left behind.

36:34Evan Shapiro:Totally agree. And it's insane that you can reach out to some very influential people on LinkedIn or potential buyers and customers, and you can build a relationship really quickly. With emails and stuff, you can talk to anyone. That's exactly right. Now, I do fear that it's going to turn into just another form of social media. It's gotten very political, especially in the six months. And I'm partially to blame for that because I do talk about politics on LinkedIn. But I do think if that can manage to stay still kind of a personal improvement, personal career, business ecosystem, I think it will be as valuable as the New York Times was in a previous area, as the Wall Street Journal has been, as the London Times has been.

37:16Now, you'd like to have a prediction or two. I know that. But what, so, well, first question, how is the media landscape changing and how do you think it's going to be changing in the next, say, 12, 18 months?

37:28Evan Shapiro:So this idea, I think in part because of the stuff I've been writing, this idea that the phone is now the center of the video universe. The wave that was started with the bullshit that is micro dramas. Yeah. That's not a real business model. That will sunset. but what's going to happen is I think you're going to see a massive uptick in premium vertical TV and that means taking shows I'm working with a collaborator named Roseberry and they are in the process of verticalizing the entire library of Neighbors the show from Australia where Kylie Minogue and Margot Robbie got their start and it works great, right?

38:14Evan Shapiro:someone asked me the other day after the Netflix earnings, you know, how does Netflix compete with TikTok because they're losing the attention more to TikTok? I said, if they just took their entire true crime library and verticalized it because they started a vertical feed and they're going out and they're making these deals with all these publishers, you have this huge library that you could verticalize yourself. So I do think you're going to see a cable-like explosion of vertical premium content. The advertisers are hyper-focused on this. The number one, other than creators, the number one topic at CanLion was vertical.

38:50Evan Shapiro:And so I think they're going to see a massive vertical explosion because here's the thing. Trillions of hours of content are being watched on vertical. Most of it sucks, right? Most of it's recorded on a phone, walking down the street, talking about absolutely total bullshit. Now imagine the great content from BBC, the great content from NBC, from Warner Brothers, from Disney, just the Pixar movies get verticalized, sponsored by brands, and distributed and syndicated across these platforms. There's a wave coming, and I believe that's going to be the biggest move of the next 12 months. And presumably if it's existing content, you could easily use AI just to create the verticalized.

39:36Evan Shapiro:To a certain extent. And I think you can appreciate this because creative still does matter, right? So if you hand a piece of AI a huge library of content and say just verticalize it, what you're going to get is half the face. But more importantly, you're going to get scenes with 12 people in it and that doesn't work. And then the music cues don't work. So yes, definitely AI should be a big portion of this stack. But you need professional television people monitoring the AI. There's this misperception of AI is going to replace everybody. Everybody who's in that 90 % of the people who've made companies that have made the major investments in AI have found that it hasn't saved them a dime.

40:16Evan Shapiro:In fact, it's actually costing them money. And so do not relinquish control of your creative to AI. The Neighbors is a great example. They're not just verticalizing the episodes as they exist. They're taking the Margot Robbie storyline and verticalizing that as a standalone series. that's what you do. But world wrestling is about to start their own vertical feed. This is every day you're going to read about something and someone new happening in the vertical space. And it's not going to be micro dramas. It's going to be micro comedies. It's going to be micro mysteries. It's going to be micro game shows.

40:52Evan Shapiro:It's going to be micro reality shows. And it's going to be produced by the big studios and the re-syndication of library to new audiences. like your daughter probably has never watched Neighbors. She may have watched Friends, right? But there are all these new shows, the old shows that can be new again in these new experiences. And I think that's going to be the big explosion over the next, I think it's going to be between now and the end of the decade, the bullshit and the slop is actually going to get pushed aside by great content, professionally produced, re-syndicated. You mentioned AI and kind of impact on jobs.

41:30There's been quite a big impact in the last 12, 18 months in both creative industry and media industries in terms of job losses, haven't there? Where are the job losses being felt? And I guess second part of that question is, if you were betting on a job in the media industry, I know we're both doing something different now, but where would you be placing your bet?

41:51Evan Shapiro:So let's go to the AI and job loss portion of it. Most of it, the excuse is AI. Most people who are replacing people with AI regret it. There's a great story about Amazon and a piece of tech that they were implementing. And the AI decided on its own to just basically erase the whole stack. And senior management goes to the people who are in charge of this and said, well, what happened? Well, we fired everybody who knew how to do this and oversee the AI, and that's where we are. And this is replicating itself in every company. Most companies report that it's not as efficient as they thought and the costs are far greater.

42:33Evan Shapiro:And the AI ecosystem is a circle jerk. It's the same money going from NVIDIA to OpenAI to Anthropic back to NVIDIA to Oracle back to NVIDIA. And this is the dot-com bubble replicating itself. Look at the SpaceX stock just since its initial IPO. It's down a trillion dollars in the last 30 days. That stock is going to crumble. So don't believe all the hype and don't replace all your people with AI because it will not work out well for you. I think the job losses are coming from a couple of different places. One, there's this bullshit factor of, hey, I can get a good pop on my stock if I announce a bunch of layoffs.

43:14Evan Shapiro:So layoffs have become the new communication strategy for C-suites to Wall Street. And that's, again, going to be something that they wind up regretting. You know, in the advertising industry, 100 ,000 jobs have been lost in the last, I think, two years, three years. And yet they spent$300 million on Can Lion. And a lot of that is just the consolidation of these dinosaur holdcos who are completely out of ideas and their margins are plummeting. And so they don't know what to do, so they just combine and lay off people. And that's going to continue, unfortunately. But at the same time, and by the way, big tech is laying off a ton of people as well.

43:58Evan Shapiro:So the consolidation is a big portion of this. that will begin to right itself probably not probably unfortunately not till the end of next year when people realize hey no one's left to do the jobs but the new opportunities are in these smaller more boutique like again you get paid very well to do what you do and you're replacing other bigger things right same thing and you know i get gigs that mckinsey used to get I get gigs that BCG used to get. Why? Because I don't charge a gargantuan amount of money because I don't have this stupid overhead that they do. So I do think small businesses is really where the big bets are going to be.

44:41Evan Shapiro:3.5 million new startup businesses were started in the U.S. just in the first half of this year. It's a brand new record. And that's happening over and over again. Meanwhile, the work and the resources are leaving big corporations and going to these smaller businesses. I think I would bet on small businesses. Now, you have to make a portfolio bet like you would in any good stock game. But that's where I think the future lies. Interesting data point. I met Jessica Jensen, a CMO at LinkedIn, in February. And she said the fastest growing job title on LinkedIn is founder, up 60%. because we're living in an era where it's never been easier to start your own business.

45:23And, you know, we've also combined that with the supply side shrinking in terms of stable jobs as well. Combine those two forces together, there's a massive explosion of people doing their own business.

45:32Evan Shapiro:That is the number one category of my followers on LinkedIn is founder. Yeah. And by the way, when you look at, I mean, Apple was a small business. Microsoft was a small business. Both started in like garages or dorm rooms, right? Meta, which was Facebook, started in a dorm room. These Hewlett Packard, Sony, 3M, these were all small businesses at one point. Will all of them become unicorns? No, that will absolutely not happen. But it's never been easier, to your point, to run a lifestyle business than it is today because you can find an outsourced CFO. You can offload a decent amount of your work to AI, actually.

46:10Evan Shapiro:That index, I coded myself using a large language model. I would have had to have hired coders previously. I told you earlier today, I'm about to automate my map and turn it into a user-driven experience. Three years ago, that was not possible. Now with these LLMs and human intervention, the combination of those two. So creativity and technology actually mix incredibly well together. If you look at these, there's never been a better boon for creators than AI because it's going to allow them to compete with studios in a way that they never could have before and agencies. And so I think the small business is now the new big business.

46:54You're absolutely right about that. The best ideas will continue to win, but there's more people that can produce the best ideas than ever before. That's exactly right. It's now democratized in a way it wasn't.

47:04Evan Shapiro:And younger too. You know, you no longer need a college degree to be successful. I am a college dropout, and so I'm a good case study for that. But I don't know. I mean, in the U.K. and in other areas, higher education is less expensive than it is in the U.S. The higher education industrial complex in the United States is going to go through a – what's happening in media is going to happen to banking. It's going to happen to higher education. It's going to happen to healthcare. It's going to happen to the automotive industry for the exact same reasons. There's this misperception that technology causes the great turmoil and upset and disruption.

47:41Evan Shapiro:That's not true. It's the shifting power dynamics between the generations that causes it. Technology accelerates it, and it answers the call, but it is never the cause. That's really interesting. You touched on this earlier, but I just want to press on it a little bit. I had Bob Hoffman on the podcast a few years ago, and he's written a lot about ad fraud. And if you take that on the face value, there is an enormous amount of fraud in the media ecosystem. What's your take on what's real and what's not? And how much of every dollar ends up actually going to the end consumer? So if you take the high-end estimates and you take the low-end estimates and you just go for the mean, 50 % of advertising is presented to non-humans.

48:29But that's wild. That's incredible. Why is no one doing anything about that? I mean, that is an industrial scale wastage.

48:37Evan Shapiro:Yeah, it's the collusion between the agencies and so between the buyers and the sellers. The three biggest tech platforms in the world have no incentive to do anything about it. None. Because they'll lose half their business, right? And the buyers have no incentive to do anything about it because what are they going to do instead of spending their money on those three platforms and the rest? So CTV, as much as 25%, maybe even higher, is fraud. On social media, it's substantially higher than that. And so if you correct for the fraud, where do you put the money? Where do you deploy the money? So there's this collusion between the buyers and the sellers that is actually hurting the brands and also hurting the consumers because we're inundated with crap ads.

49:26Evan Shapiro:The personalization isn't really good. Talk about a really good use of AI, by the way. This is the perfect use of AI is to eliminate the fraud. But Meta will never do that because Mark Zuckerberg is a dickhead and he's stealing money from people under false pretenses. Remember when there was this study or this report that came out that half the video viewing that they had reported was not there? Right? I expected people to yank all their money off. Exactly, yeah. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. That's wild. And this summer, Meta surpassed YouTube for total advertising revenue.

50:08Evan Shapiro:Meta now sells more advertising than all television on the planet. Yeah, that was this year, wasn't it? That happened. Yeah, that's this year that that happened. And so they never get punished for the bullshit that they pull on the ecosystem. And it's because the ecosystem is basically one big set of colluders. And we need to do something about that if we want to improve both the return on investment of advertising, but also the experience for the end user as well. What would you do? It's a great question.

51:09Evan Shapiro:media for a period of time and found no effect on their business. But they didn't do anything about it. And it's because it's like, well, what do we do? We have to market, right? And so I do think I would put the employee generated content thing. To me, that's a really build your own. That's actually, I guess my answer would be build your own feeds, build your own channels, talk directly to your consumers. I think one of the other great trends that'll happen over the next 36 months is creators as brands, building their own channels, circumnavigating the platforms, going directly to the audience themselves, having a communication and a conversation with them, but then judging not on reach, but on engagement, on efficacy, and focusing exclusively on that.

52:02Evan Shapiro:Scale is no longer a metric that matters. So maybe just round us up. you've been running Media Odyssey podcast. What have been your biggest lessons from that podcast? I'll go back to what I just said, which is there is this misperception that reach still matters, that scale still matters. And whether it's the Media Odyssey podcast, which you can subscribe to right now, you can hit pause and go subscribe on your phone or my media war and peace newsletter on Substack, which you can subscribe to right now after you hit pause, or my LinkedIn feed, it isn't about the size of the audience. The engagement really matters.

52:42Evan Shapiro:That's the crucial thing. And when people say, well, what's your reach on your podcast? I say a thousand percent of the audience you give a fuck about. And we generate well into the five figures per episode because we dedicate a whole episode to a brand and our partner. We don't just do silly ads that no one listens to and that everybody skips. We really go deep. We make it entertaining. We make it content. And so whatever the size of our audience is, everybody we've worked with has told us the reaction has been great. I've gotten so much good feedback. I got calls from people. I'm still getting calls from people.

53:18Evan Shapiro:And that to me is the most important. It's a direct response kind of measurement. But direct response works because you know whether you're selling products or not. Isn't that the hands on cans, butts in trucks, heads in beds, hearts in carts? That's the crucial measurement that matters. Why do you care about anything else? Yeah. I just wish someone would invent a way of tracking this because I'm the same as you, right? So anytime someone comes on this podcast, all I can tell them is good stuff's going to happen. I can't tell them what. They might sell more books. They might get a speaking gig.

53:57They might win a pitch. I don't know what it is because they do different things. I said, I promise you after this, something magical will happen to you. And it's because your audience loves your show. Yeah. And there was a good example the other day. I hope you don't mind me saying, but I had Anselmo Ramas on the podcast from the Gus Agency. Yeah. It was a week before Cannes. And then by Cannes, he was doing two pitches in Cannes from two very big companies, very cool companies, global, that asked him to pitch or got to pitch. Based on that? Within one week. Like literally the podcast was one week before Cannes.

54:31And then he's doing two pitches that week. Yeah. I don't pitch anymore.

54:37Evan Shapiro:No, you don't need to. Because people, I may lose business because I'm too expensive, but it's never because the people, and I don't have to explain who I am anymore. Like my title is chaos cartographer, media cartographer. No one asks me what that means anymore. Every meeting I have starts with, I love your stuff. Right? That's how I get 100 % of my new opportunities. And it's not because I'm so great at what I do. It's because I'm consistent, because I trust my audience, because I respect my audience, and because I super serve the super fan. Focus on that. Do that and everything will start to shift for you.

55:13But to your point at the beginning as well, just to say as well, anyone listening, that's a compounding effect of how many years you've been doing this? This is nine years. Nine years. Yeah. Yeah. That's the other bit of advice I always give in this moment is it's a compounding thing. You know, you have to put the hard yards in. 10 ,000 hours of practice is a real thing. It's a real good measure. Yeah. And then it just gets this very exciting kind of tipping point.

55:35Evan Shapiro:And so I do think, you know, first of all, I think most measurement out in the world is bullshit. and the way they run. I think there's as much fraud in measurement as there is in advertising. And so I do think, unfortunately, there is no one size fits all. Even though my attention index, I feel, is a good signpost, it is not a way to buy media, right? And you can go to index.eshop.tv to look at that index and play with it yourself and take a look at what it is. It's free. It is not meant to be a purchased product. That's part of the problem with measurement is that you can only buy it, right?

56:13Evan Shapiro:So unfortunately, I think measurement is going to ultimately be in the hands, the eyes, the minds of the two people doing the deal. How are we going to measure this? I don't know. How do you want to measure this? Let's grade our own homework between us. What does success look like for you in this case? It's not easy anymore. While we were growing up, there were three channels. There was no competition, right? It was, let's be honest, it was relatively easy when we were coming up. Now it's fucking hard. And this may no longer be the business for you. I'm sorry. But if you're prepared to do the hard work and do the homework, then you can succeed.

56:55Evan Shapiro:But it is going to take bespoke measurement, bespoke work. It's going to take much more tailoring and personalization for the end user than it did before. Because now, not only is there more competition, but there are nine, eight billion people on the planet competing for attention with you. One of the best questions a guest ever asked, Niels Leonard, about three years ago, he just said, before we did the podcast, what do you want to happen as a result of this podcast? And to your point there, there's so much measurement out there. We get lost in it. There's a gazillion different metrics and so on.

57:31But we've got to stop and think, what are we doing this for? what do we want to happen next and how do we want to achieve it? And I think just ask us basic questions before you hit send on that.

57:40Evan Shapiro:And most times when you ask people. They don't know. They don't know. No. That is why it's such a good question because it sounds stupidly obvious, but people rarely ask them, what do you want to happen? Yeah, what is the perfect outcome? And they have all these RFPs and all these words, and sometimes I just try to weed through the words and I just don't know what you're asking me for. Most people just want to get the job done, get their boss, keep their boss happy, tick the box. And that's unfortunately why media is crumbling. And also we continue to just hire the same people over and over again.

58:16Evan Shapiro:Diversity of thought is as crucial as diversity of crops in agriculture. If you don't want to ruin the soil, rotate the crops, rotate the thinking inside your organization constantly. And that's how to stay fresh and ahead of the game. So to round off then, ask everyone this, but what is the best piece of advice you've ever been given? The best piece of advice I was ever given was by a woman I know for many years named Robin, who said to me, what is your superpower? You need to find and define your superpower. And I was already pretty successful when this happened. but it sent me on this big journey inside myself to figure out what it is I'm best in the world at and what I can do that no one else can replicate and it took me years to figure it out but I did and the byproduct of it is what I am now and so the best piece of advice I can give anybody is go on a journey to find your superpower and figure out how to articulate that to other people and almost everything will take care of itself.

59:27That's amazing. The second best piece of advice is work out what your superpower isn't and hire for that.

59:34Evan Shapiro:Well, yes. Build a team around that. That's exactly right. I am surrounded by people who do things I can't do. Exactly. Brilliant. Perfect place to end, Evan. Thank you so much, mate. My pleasure. It's been great to talk. Thank you. So I hope you enjoyed that episode of Uncensored CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter. So if you'd like to get my thoughts on the one thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the One Thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast. Just launched Uncensored Renegades with the fabulous Cori Marchesotto.

1:00:09She is one of the world's best CMOs. She's an absolute rock star. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that. It's in your feed, Uncensored Renegades. And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast. It would not happen without them. So big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.